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About Us

JAPAN UNIQUE GIFTS is an online shop operated by YAQMO as a portal site to the world of Japanese culture. Our aspiration is to introduce unique items handcrafted in limited quantities in Japan and make them available for purchase worldwide. We are starting off with a small selection of gifts, but with plans to steadily seek out more and more superlative artisans and offer an ever wider and more varied array of unique items. Please let us know if there is something special you would be interested in, and we will do our best to add it to our list! Click here to send your feedbacks.

How to gain back your childhood open-mindedness -- before they're gone!

Japanese Karakuri (trick) Puzzle Boxes are designed and crafted in the mountainous region of Hakone, approximately two hours from Tokyo. The area is popular tourist destination from the late Edo Period (1603 - 1868) with beautiful lakes, hot springs and fabulous sceneries, and continues to be very popular even today.

With an abundance of quality wood varieties, many souvenirs were created using wood and through generations of craftsmanship, they developed into a highly crafted wooden boxes. Among them, that attracted the public attention was known as "Himitsu Bako" or secret box. The boxes were constructed with tricky interlocking wooden elements and needed number of puzzling steps to open the box, making the inner compartment as a secret vault.

The concept of this secret box led to a new form of secret boxes, named as Karakuri Puzzle Box by Akio Kamei, one of the foremost contemporary trick puzzle box designer and craftsman in the world. He is the founder and head of craftsmen at Karakuri Creation Group in Hakone. Their aim is to go beyond the tradition and to create more enjoyable, more tricky and higher quality puzzle boxes. They sure have succeeded and continues to come up with more challenging tricks and puzzles!

Some of the boxes look real simple and they are so well made and sturdy that you will wonder if the box actually opens… it will. The challenge is to approach with a fresh perspective and an open mind, or in other words, to open the box, its best to think outside the box! Enjoy the challenge!